Kotaku steals story idea from Gamerblahhhg!

So, the previous post here on relative pricing between UMD and downloaded games for the PSP was really my first attempt at an original news story. I thought the results of my quick research were interesting so I emailed a link to a bunch of different news blogs. The story got some nice traffic from a link over at VE3D and another at Shacknews.

I also got a response by email from Brian Crecente at Kotaku. He said this:

Hey there,
Neat idea but you may want to consider a different headline if you want links.

You’ll notice Crecente used a top ten list from Gamerankings to generate his list of games to check, all but guaranteeing the list would include some of the best selling PSP games, and therefore most plentiful in the used market keeping prices low. He also fails to account for shipping charges whatsoever in his comparison.

So to sum up, Kotaku will steal story ideas from other bloggers, fail to acknowledge that fact with a link to the original research and then do a poor job with their own version.

Did you notice the credit I gave you at the bottom of the story? I said it was inspired by your story. We didn’t just link to your findings because they weren’t complete, and you kept that headline up for two days, well past when I started working on my version.

Where? I didn’t see any attribution to me or my blog in your story the day it was published and I don’t see anything anywhere on that story right now. Was it there and then edited out at some point?

As for the timeline, I published the story, emailed you, got your email, changed the title and responded to your email all on October 3rd. Admittedly, about 12 hours elapsed before I changed the title. Your story was published on the 5th.